Berthe
by tecmessa22
Summary: In a sickroom in Paris Rodolphe Boulanger embarks upon the last conquest of his life...based on Madame Bovary.


**Berthe**

_Based on characters created by Gustave Flaubert. While in the public domain, all rights are still Flaubert's_.

'He just needs to rest more and not get so agitated.'

Berthe had her back to the doctor as he assembled his equipment and wiped his hands. She was looking out the window onto to the wide boulevard below her, watching the finely dressed ladies walking by.

'Otherwise, things seem steady. A good testament to your care.' Berthe's fist clenched.

'If there are any developments, please let me know right away.'

Berthe's lip curled; she could see it curling in the glass. But when she turned to the doctor he saw the neutral face of a professional nurse. 'Of course, Doctor.'

The doctor looked around the room enviously. This was a real house of the gentry and its suffocating furniture humbled him. He sighed and then smiled at Berthe because she did not make him feel threatened. 'He's not running you ragged?'

'No, Doctor. He is an - exemplary patient.'

'Ah!' The doctor's voice dropped. 'It can't be very long now.'

'No, Doctor, I am sure it isn't.'

'And your health? You are taking care of yourself?' the doctor asked, pulling on his gloves. He was curious about this compact little nurse. He believed that she should go far in carrying out the unmentionable tasks of the sick room.

'As always, doctor.'

'Good. As I said, let me know if there are any further developments. I'll see myself out.' The doctor wanted to enjoy being in the house, looking at its beauty, without Berthe's cold eyes on him.

And so Berthe was left alone. She sank onto a chair and gave a deep sigh. Her face softened and she looked down at her hands folded in her lap. Well, not long to go after all.

A piercing whistle sounded somewhere outside and Berthe jumped. It must have been a train far off, she told herself. Nevertheless she stood up and pulled the curtains tight, shutting out the boulevard and the finely dressed ladies below. Now the room was dark and safe.

Then the bell sounded - not as startling as the whistle but as frightening in its own way to Berthe. She stood up straight and her face hardened. He wanted to see her.

Smoothing her apron, she went through the quiet rooms, following the sound of the bell. She paused before a heavy mahogany door, so well-polished that she could just about make out her own shape on the surface. The bell sounded again and she went in.

He lay in the bed. He was swallowed by the bed, by the richness of the covers, by the tight pull of the sheets over his weak body. His head sank into the pillow and she could only make out the bump of his nose from where she stood.

'Berthe - some water…'

She poured him some from a jug by the bed. She lifted his small head and put the water to his cracked lips. She had to suppress a shudder as she saw his grey tongue lapping at the water.

When Berthe decided that he had had enough, she let his head lie in the crook of her arm as she lowered it back onto the pillow. His eyes were fixed on her face. His eyes always disgusted her because they were covered in a white film. Already he looked dead.

She took the cup to a washbasin and washed it. He watched the straight black line of her back. 'Berthe?'

She put the cup to one side and turned. 'Yes, sir?'

'Sit by me.'

She sat by the bed and he reached out to her. She closed her eyes and let him take her hand.

Rodolphe liked the feel of her hand in his. It wasn't a smooth hand, not a hand to sing of, but he liked the deep lines and creases in it. He let his thumb explore the furrows in her palm. He had never known anyone with hands like that.

He is so cold, she thought. If it is to be soon, let it be before he touches me again.

'You don't look well,' he said.

'I'm just naturally pale.'

'If I were better, I'd take you riding.'

'I don't like horses.'

He let out a breath. 'Something then. I would think of something.' He clutched her hand as he thought. 'I could take you boating.'

'All right then,' said Berthe tolerantly. 'Boating, why not? Where shall we boat?'

'Somewhere in Normandy?'

'I'd prefer Provence.'

'Provence it is then. We'd take a fair size boat - you'd have to bring a parasol, dear, sinceyou're so pale. You'd sit, I'd punt. Have you ever been boating before?'

'Once.'

'Just once? When I get better, I'll make up for that. I should ask you formally though.'

'Whenever you feel ready, sir.'

'Miss Lamy, would you like to accompany me on a boating trip on the afternoon of the - well, we'll fix a date later, won't we?'

'I would be delighted, Mr Boulanger,' Berthe replied. He still had a hold of her hand and was pulling so that her shoulders were leaning forward. She tried to humour him when these playful moods came on him; it was her greatest act of kindness towards him.

Rodolphe put her hand to his cheek. He wanted to sleep now and he couldn't sleep without feeling her presence. He counted down from a hundred and fell into an even sleep.

When she was sure that he was sleeping, Berthe slipped her hand from his face. She left the room as quickly as she could and nearly ran into the drawing room. Using a pitcher of water there, she washed her hand thoroughly. The curtains were still drawn; outside she could hear a small girl calling 'Papa Papa Papa!'

Berthe had become used to sleeping om the chair in the drawing room at any moment when it was possible to rest. She would curl up and sleep instantly. She needed nothing to reassure her.

All that talk of boating, though. It made her think of her father. She had been boating once, with her parents. She had sat on her father's knee…but whenever she thought of her father, the sharp whistle of the factory would sound in her thoughts and his face would slip away from her. Her mother's face never formed in her mind to begin with except as a generically pretty assembly of big eyes, small nose and red lips. She remembered the character of her father's face, how he had held his heavy features.

For years she had been angry with her father for giving up and dying and leaving her, but her urge to see him again had outrun her anger. She missed him.

By the time she had woken up and thought to open the curtains again it was already night and not decent to open them anyway. She lit a lamp and kept the light low. She pressed her fingertips to her temples and rubbed them in a circular motion. Her eyes fell upon the letter she had received this morning from her employer, Mr Boulanger's cousin.

It had taken her an hour to read - she had never been good at reading. Whatever intelligence Berthe possessed was instinctive and of the moment. She had been a good factory worker as a child, a good nurse as an adolescent and now, as a young woman, a discreet private nurse, the type hired by dignified families to soften the last days of their more degenerate members. Important matters such as letters though were a problem for her.

She had a way with money and was always aware of it, so the contents of this letter remained with her. Cutting her pay, were they? Too expensive considering how slowly matters were progressing, the letter said, but we'll recommend you to another family once the unfortunate event occurs. And so on.

Berthe looked at the hunting pistols above the fireplace. Inlaid with silver, no less. She stuck out her tongue at the hunting pistols, at the fireplace and at Mr Boulanger and his cousin. She no more believed in the family's impoverishment than she believed in fairy tales. Her headache would not leave her.

Berthe removed her nurse's cap and unpinned her hair. The pressure on her head lifted and a dark blonde tangle fell to her shoulder blades. She sank into the chair - her chair until the unfortunate event occurred. She began whistling as she had in the factory to keep up her spirits. She was a vulgar woman but she had seen too many genteel women go insane to be bothered by it.

She picked up the letter again. Whistling, she picked out the figures, the important symbols among the nicely-rounded handwriting and flowery phrases. She could live on that. What galled her was that this cousin - in her thirties and with a bad reputation - was Mr Boulanger's heir and was sure to get everything. Well, there was nothing one could do except hope that the bell didn't ring. He was sure to sleep the night through.

Rodolphe awoke two hours later to utter silence. Somehow he knew that this was the last time - or one of the last times - that he would awake. He struggled up. There was the window, the fireplace, the pitcher and, within reach, the bell. He was thinking about the lawyer's visit earlier today. He considered that the moment when he had truly died.

Berthe had been sent on an outing - he had no idea what Berthe did in her spare time but he was sure that it was useful, whatever it was - and he and the lawyer and the clerk had signed papers. The clerk had been bored but the lawyer had smiled. He had stored the papers in a case and stood up, saying, 'Very well, Mr Boulanger.' From that point on, Rodolphe knew he had ceased to exist legally. Twenty minutes later the doctor had arrived and treated him like a medical curiosity and although presumably Berthe had returned, he was denied the pleasure of seeing her until the doctor had left.

He had become fond of the nurse, although before his illness he would never have noticed her. There was something forbidding about her. She had been hired by his cousin and like his cousin was a cold young woman. Unlike his cousin, whom he knew had a bad reputation, there was nothing about Berthe that was hidden. She seemed a solid woman. He tried to get her to talk about herself, but she never did. He knew that she did not consider him a friend.

When Berthe had first arrived he was bed-ridden but not in the state he was now. He could sit up and conduct business and dictate letters. He even received letters from his latest mistress. Now he couldn't remember what the woman looked like or sounded like. A pretty mouth saying pretty things. All the women he had known were like that.

As he had become more ill he began to find Berthe more interesting. It was mainly because she said nothing. He had no way of guessing of what Berthe was thinking or what she was up to. He admitted to himself that he had little idea of her personality. She had a pale face, curling yellowish hair and expressionless grey eyes. She was striking in the way a statue was but she wasn't vivacious.

It was as his faculties failed that she began to mean more to him. He found the roughness of her hands peculiarly exciting. They made him feel alive. She had a nice scent too. She was polite to him, would listen to him. She never asked for anything, never told him lies.

And yesterday he had said to himself that he loved her. He would have been a different man if they had met years ago. Of course, she hadn't been born years ago. When Berthe had been born where would he have been? Moving to the house at Yonville-l'Abbaye. The dates seemed right there.

So even though he was dying, he still had Berthe, the wife whom he should have had years ago. The problem was that he was terrified of this thought becoming apparent when Berthe was in the room. He thought her a woman who could hold terrible scorn towards a person and he had never liked being scorned. So he watched her and held her hand and smiled at her, sometimes sweetly, sometimes lasciviously. As long as she was near and didn't know anything, all would be well.

Berthe was planning what she would do after the unfortunate event. Go back to Normandy? No point, especially since her Aunt Lamy had given her her own surname. Whenever she encountered any member of her father's family she had to go through a tired explanation of why she was no longer Berthe Bovary. She disliked playing the destitute relative, so that was out.

She could wait for Miss Boulanger's recommendation. This kind of job wasn't bad. It was good pay and even when it wasn't good, it was liveable pay. Yes, she would take Miss Boulanger up on her offer. It was the best course. Paris wasn't cheap but you couldn't find a job like this in Normandy.

Rodolphe didn't come into her thoughts at all until the bell rang. She stood up and automatically went towards the bedroom. Halfway there she remembered that her hair was down and that she had left her hairpins by her letter on the table. She turned back to fetch them when the bell rang again. She hurried into the bedroom.

'Would you like some water, sir?' Berthe asked him. The whites of his eyes looked at her. To him she was a grey object in the black room but her hair glimmered.

'No, I just - would like company.'

Berthe took her appointed seat.

'Berthe…what do you know about me?'

It was going to be a deathbed confessional, she thought. From his cousin's comments she had a rough idea of his reputation and while it didn't shock her, it didn't interest her either. Debauchery was something the wealthy did, just as her Aunt Lamy had done 'religion' even as she had sent her to the cotton mill as a child and her bosses at the mill and in the hospitals had 'done' brutality.

'Nothing much, sir.'

'Would you believe I was very handsome in my day?'

'Yes, you must have been.'

'I travelled and had good company.'

'A nice life!' said Berthe, feeling a sting somewhere.

Rodolphe thought that maybe she was jealous of other loves he may have had. 'Wish I had known you back then.'

'We couldn't have met,' Berthe said crushingly; she was not an imaginative woman.

'If we could have…' he reached for her hand.

'…there would have been nothing doing, sir,' replied Berthe, hands held in her lap.

'I always loved the ones for whom there was 'nothing doing,'' said Rodolphe thoughtfully, withdrawing his hand. 'They were the ones worth respecting. The others I merely liked.'

'I don't want to hear this,' Berthe snapped, standing up.

'No, just…stay a little.' She sat down but her arms were crossed.

'I-I always wanted someone who didn't lie, but they all lied to me, Berthe, all of them.'

'And you never lied yourself?'

'No. I was honest. Once a woman wanted to leave her husband for me…she had a little child. I couldn't break apart a family.'

Berthe rose and walked to the window hidden behind a gauzy curtain. 'Or you couldn't be bothered with her anymore.'

Rodolphe chuckled. 'There's no real romance in you is there?'

'None, sir.'

Rodolphe became quiet again. 'That's very sad, you know.'

'Romance is for the weak-minded.'

'For most of my life I would have agreed with you.'

Berthe turned. 'You are very ill, sir.' Her face was expressionless and it irritated him.

'Why do you never smile?'

She started; she was never aware of whether she was smiling or not. Besides it was a hard question because she did not have an answer. 'I-it would be inappropriate.'

'I would bet anything I have that you have a nice smile.'

The deathbed of a rake, thought Berthe coldly, as she walked over to him and adjusted the sheets covering him. He could smell her and her scent made him feel safe.

'So you were never in love?'

'Never.'

'Why not?'

Berthe found this insolent but she looked at him and saw how weak and defenceless he was. She smiled to herself, knowing that she was stronger, and said, 'I never had the time.'

'So you think one needs time to fall in love?'

'Well, you had plenty of time and I daresay you were never in love.' She bent to smooth thesheets, her hair falling over her face.

'Just once,' said Rodolphe. 'I wasted a lot of time.'

Berthe straightened and said nothing.

'What did you do in your life?' he asked; he very much wanted to know about her life, what she had been doing when she could have lightened his final years.

'I worked in hospitals.'

'Before that?'

Berthe closed her eyes and then he saw her grow pale. He wished he had enough strength to take her in his arms and comfort her.

'You don't have to tell me if you don't want to,' he continued gently.

She looked down at him and they held each other's gaze for a full minute. It was almost too much for him.

Berthe sat beside him again and said quietly, 'I worked in a cotton mill. If it wasn't for an accident I would still be there now.'

'You seem - better than that somehow.'

'I am not. I know my station.'

'What were your family?'

'My father was an _officier de sante_.'

'And your mother?'

'Don't know. Don't remember her. She died when I was very little.'

'Sad,' said Rodolphe without feeling it. He watched Berthe's hands. So she had worked in a mill. That explained their texture. He thought of the grief in her face when she had spoken of it and took her hand. He pressed his lips to the deepest lines. He wanted to be young again.

Berthe snatched her hand away. 'You need to sleep,' she said coldly and left.

He closed his eyes. He would be young now. He would ask Berthe to marry him and because she was a sensible girl she would marry him. He wouldn't travel and she would stay with him. None of his old friends could see her; he had to protect her. There would be no insults against her. They would be together. It would be pleasurable - it would be - he couldn't imagine it anymore. The old feelings were gone with his vitality. When he imagined being that close to her it was not to entertain himself but because thinking of her that way felt as if it were the mostnatural thing in the world. He dozed.

Berthe washed her hands hard. She remembered the sensation of his lips. She saw her face in the small, spotted glass above the basin. Yes, she was blushing. She looked terrified at the spots of red in her cheeks. She could not help this lack of control.

She left the small washroom and returned to her chair. She sank down. Kissing had always frightened her. Her mother…

Her mother had tried to kiss her hand once. Her mother was lying ill and she had frightened her and then she had tried to kiss her hand…

Mother. Emma. She thought of Mother as Emma, not as Mother. Her father had taken her to the grave every day. He had knelt before it and she had been bored. She had chased butterflies through the long grasses surrounding the graveyard; she had read the epitaphs on every grave. She had scraped moss out of the letters on her mother's headstone. It had become stuck in the sharp points of the Ms in her mother's name. Emma.

Sometimes her father had been angry with her for not sitting still and staring at the grave as he was. Sometimes he had clutched her to him and cried over her and said again and again that he had loved her mother. She had hated love then. It made her father unsafe.

When she had found her father dead, she had not known he was dead. In fact she had been hopeful when she saw him at peace for the first time she could remember. Never had she seen such stillness. She had approached in awe. She had thought that everything would be all right now. She had touched him and couldn't wake him.

For the longest time she had seen love as chaotic, the cause of suffering, and death as orderly, the natural process which alleviated suffering. Sometimes as she watched her patients with her cool eyes she wanted to joke that it was better than being in love. But patients were not people to converse with. Once you got close to a patient, you were of no further use to them.

Why then, as she passed happy families in the park in the anonymous and sexless garb of a nurse, did her heart stir with envy and anger? She tried to fight these feelings but they were overpowering for her. By the time she reached her room she would experience an uncharacteristic storm of weeping. Before she would have shrugged her shoulders at these feelings but they were becoming unbearable. She even felt them as the doctor and Miss Boulanger, two people otherwise unacquainted, discussed her patient in front of her. If she were honest with herself, that was why she found this particular job irksome. It had lasted three months and she was growing attached to this house even though she did not belong there.

Rodolphe awoke and thought wearily that he may as well tell Berthe that she was the first woman he had ever been in love with. Since he was legally and socially dead he had little to fear from loss of face. And then, his last confession told, he would expire and she would remember him with a mixture of love and pity. A good legacy. He reached for the bell.

She came back. Her hair was done up again, to his disappointment. He beckoned her over and, with some difficulty, shifted onto his side so that he could look at her. He found her face a curious mixture of the strange and familiar. He focused on her well-formed lips. No rouge. Lies came from rouged lips.

'Yes, sir?'

'Would you read to me, Berthe?'

'You would like, I assume, the Bible.'

'No. This one.' He pointed to a red-bound book by the table. She picked it up. 'The Afterlife in Abrahamic Religions,' it read. Berthe nodded approvingly. It looked edifying, the sort of book a man should have read to him on his deathbed if he did not want the Bible.

'Page ninety-seven, please. It is marked.'

Berthe settled the book on her knees. The print was large, thankfully. When she read aloud she often inserted her own words; reading was not easy for her, try though she might to improve her ability.

'Furthermore in certain regions, they say that on death the martyr is admitted to Paradise. This version of Paradise is rather unlike that of the Christians. In this case, the martyr is granted eternal and unending youth. He is attended by a group of the most beautiful women, called the houri ' - here Berthe stumbled over the word and did not get the pronunciation quite right - 'who minister to the martyr - ' She stopped and shut the book with a snap. She raised her head to speak to her patient and saw that his eyes were fixed on her. Appalled by what she read there, she raised her hand.

Rodolphe gazed at her hand and wondered if it would hurt. He had played a nasty trick, yes, but he could die dreaming of her now. She deserved a petty revenge.

Berthe dropped her hand and put the book back on the nightstand. 'Really, this is ridiculous, sir.'

'It's not my fault you have no romance in you.'

'There's a fine line between 'romantic' and 'improper,'' Berthe replied coolly.

'If I had met you earlier I would have discovered that line.'

Berthe snorted and then began to laugh because the situation was becoming ridiculous. Rodolphe managed a smile but he was uncertain of her laughter.

Berthe sat down and took his hand of her own volition. Her face was friendly and something in him grasped at this. She was responding to him at last. 'We both know you wouldn't notice me if you were able to get about. It's only because you're here and there's no-one else other than me that you like me.'

'That's not true…' But they both knew he was lying. There was a silence that lasted for several minutes.

'Needed to lose my strength for it to work,' he muttered.

'Perhaps.'

'I wanted to fall in love all my life, like I had read about. But you can't fall in love that way if you're a man.'

'No,' said Berthe and her voice was soft. 'Look, I wouldn't do this usually, but do you want me to fetch - her?'

'No.' Rodolphe's lip curled. 'She'll be busy finding another customer. She's very beautiful but she's trash compared to you.'

'Why call her trash?'

'She should have a real occupation.'

'There are worse.'

He looked at her. 'You surprise me.'

'How?'

'I expected you to condemn her, pour poison all over her.'

'We both came from nothing.'

'You didn't end up like her.'

'I was lucky. She wasn't. Nor was anyone else I knew.'

'How were you lucky? You ended up in a cotton mill.'

'Which I escaped.'

'By accident.'

'By accident.'

Rodolphe looked at her and asked, 'What accident?'

'Someone's arm got caught in a machine. The gears ground it to meat.'

Rodolphe recoiled; his own death, as far as he could tell, smelt of camphor and linen sheets, a respectable death. Shameful deaths smelt of blood and metal.

'What did that have to do with you?'

'I was eight at the time. I had seen my father treat bleeding patients. She was the little girl who worked next to me. Jeanne-Marie. The arm was torn off at the shoulder - it was hanging on by the ligaments. I took off my dress and tried to staunch the bleeding. They had to send for a doctor. He said that I was a clever little girl, that I had managed to save her life for the moment. He offered me a job, better paid than the cotton mill. I said to discuss it with my Great-Aunt Lamy. I gave him my address but all the time I was watching his assistants put my friend on the stretcher. She kept calling my name and I ran to her, held her other hand. They pushed me back, took her away. We went back to work.'A tear trailed down Berthe's cheek. 'I had managed to save her life for one more day. It would have been kinder to let her die.'

Rodolphe was silent. He had no idea about what to say. He had heard of accidents in factories and had considered them necessary to keep society working. He still believed that, even now. He felt an anger growing inside him towards dead little Jeanne-Marie because she was another obstacle between himself and Berthe.

Berthe went on: 'The doctor employed me as a - well, nurse-in-training. He said that I was calm and unafraid of death, that it was a good thing and I worked hard.' Berthe laughed in an ugly way. 'Thank you, Jeanne-Marie.' She became more quiet, staring into her lap 'There is no romance. You were more correct before, from a physiological point of view.' Berthe was herself again and yet she was not. Something was cracking inside, Rodolphe could see.

'I love you,' he said.

'Yes,' said Berthe, as if it were a matter of fact. 'I expect you think you do.' A bell sounded far off from the other room. 'I have to see who it is - I expect it's LeCroix with some soup for you.'

'Don't - leave me -'

'I will return soon.'

He was alone again and could hear rain hitting the windowpanes - a defeated sound. He clutched the sheets under his hand, which shook even as he did it. Yes, that was it; his body had always got in the way of what his heart wanted. Berthe may not believe him but it didn't matter. It did not a change a thing.

He went over every moment of love in his past, every moment he could remember, and replaced each different woman with her image. Then he was content.

He lasted one more night. The doctor called the next morning and again spoke to Berthe, reporting no change. Berthe nodded and did not notice that the doctor was becoming increasingly respectful of her. She was not to know that the doctor knew the contents of the will, a document of little interest to her. She returned to the sick room because she realized that she had entered the death watch.

The patient seemed better; not stronger, but certainly more animated. The first thing she asked after she sat down was 'Do you need a priest?'

'No, not just yet.'

'Very well.' She had already asked LeCroix to write a letter explaining how matters stood to the family confessor. She had not wanted to surprise Rodolphe but now there was no choice. The confessor would be entertained discreetly by the upper servants until she gave the signal.

'Hold my hand, Berthe.' She placed her hand in his.

He continued: 'You don't have to worry any more, you don't have to worry ever again.'

'Shhh.'

'If there were time, I would marry you. Would you let me?' She looked at him pityingly.

He coughed. 'Will you ever marry?'

'I don't know. It's something I don't think about.'

'Soon, you'll have to. You have to be safe.'

'Don't distress yourself.'

'Your health, Berthe. And good health to your husband too, I suppose. Lucky bastard.' Berthe smiled at this profanity when he had expected her to be angry. 'Oh, swearing amuses you, hm?'

'Somewhat.'

'You are a dark horse.'

She gave a little bow of her head.

'Why don't you have your hair down?'

'It gets into everything.'

'Since I'll never see it down again after this occasion -' Rodolphe's voice remained light because even now the thought of his own death was inconceivable to him '-would you do me the honour of letting me see it?'

Berthe paused and considered the wasted face, the eyes fixed on her. She removed her cap and undid her hair.

'Thank you.'

The rain fell again. Berthe said, softly, 'You're the first person who ever said 'I love you' to me.'

'Your mother or father?'

'I told you I don't remember my mother. My father…I loved him, but he always spoke of loving my mother, not of loving me.'

'I understand him.'

She bit her lip. 'How?'

'If you had borne me dozens of children, I still would have loved you over them.'

'And I would have loved them over you,' she exclaimed before she could stop herself, because it was presumptuous to speak of herself bearing the master's children.

'I would have been content with that.'

'I assume you already have children.'

'A couple whom I could never acknowledge as mine. They receive annuities from my lawyers. Come nearer.' She bent her head to him and he stroked her cheek, letting his fingertip glide over it. 'Yours would have been different, of course.'

'Of course.'

He dug his nail into her cheek. She didn't flinch even as he tried to inflict pain. She understood brutality.

'I love you.'

'Indeed.'

'Ah, she doesn't try to fight it! How soft the tigress is!'

'Stop this Byronic nonsense. I'm not as stupid as some of your paramours.'

He thought of Emma Bovary and chuckled. 'No, you most certainly are not.' He settled again and twined a lock of her hair around his finger and tugged on it. He had done this with the hair of his nurse when he was very small. Berthe, who had handled small children, was tolerant of her hair being used in this way.

'You feel nice.'

'That sounds simple enough to be honest.'

'You're right, Berthe. If I was well I would not have pursued you. I would have noticed you though.'

'Oh?'

'Oh yes. But I would have realized that there was - nothing doing. I would have called you ugly and mocked you behind your back.'

'I'm used to mockery. Don't worry, I wouldn't have held it against you.'

'Damn, I want to get better.'

Berthe shut her eyes. 'You know that isn't going to happen.'

He slid more fingers into her hair. 'It isn't fair.'

'You've had a better life than most.'

He paused. Yes, he had had a good life. Berthe was right. It was the most comforting thing she had ever said to him, her final vindication. He took her hand and buried his face in it. He could forget the past. Now she was there and there was only her.

Berthe felt the old mixture of contempt and pity. He really did love her. A flare of love in a loveless life, strange and perhaps dangerous for her. He would be dead soon and his love with him; the love he offered her was a love without complications because it was a love without a future. She could never have loved him; he repulsed her physically and morally.

She remembered reaching out to her father because that was what loyal daughters did. After he died she kept reaching out because she had been conditioned to do so. She had reached out to Jeanne-Marie, to patients, to Rodolphe.

'I love you.'

He was speaking again and she was afraid. She was starved for love, for a person who wanted to see her, who was glad she existed. She leant back and hated the darkness of the room, the ticking of the clocks. Her head ached.

Rodolphe saw her eyes flutter shut and knew that she was in pain. He grasped her hand and she grasped back. 'Don't be afraid, darling. I'm nearly dead.'

Tears rolled down her face and she understood the power her mother had possessed over her father and how her father must have felt when he realized that her mother cared little for him. It had been a running battle in her family - herself and her father pitched against her mother, desperate for her attention.

'Put your cheek on mine,' he commanded softly. He was using the old tricks, yes, but this time they were important. She did so and he forgot that they were separate beings.

The light outside the blinds grew dim and grey. Rodolphe could not see this nor feel the room become cold but Berthe did. She shivered and he held her more tightly. He crooned, 'Don't be afraid, don't be afraid.' His mind was wandering; this was how his nurse had treated him as a child.

Berthe came to herself. Her eyes opened and she sat up slowly. His arms clung to her. 'I need a few minutes alone.'

His lips were parted. He nodded.

Berthe returned to the sitting room and drew the heavy damask curtains. He would be dead by the morning, she knew it. Her patient. She had been fond of patients before, yet she was not fond of him. He moved her but only because he was the one person who claimed to love her. She had a useful fit of weeping to ease the physical strain. She had needed those words for years without realizing it. Now that she had heard them she could not go back to being the woman she had been before. She had to evolve a new strategy for survival. She turned her head towards the sickroom. Her eyes then fell on the letter on the table. She must see this through. She washed her eyes and returned to the sickroom. Every minute was important now.

He was waiting for her with a smile. Without saying a word she lay down beside him and put her arms around him. She was unafraid of death, whether it was present or imminent. It had been years since she had been held or had held anyone.

For Rodolphe her embrace was a quiet happiness. Something inside him that had always been hungry was satisfied at last.

'Little wife,' he breathed.

She nodded against his cheek and accepted the fiction.

'Let me lie against you, little wife.'

She undressed him and nearly wept over the grey shrunken body. Then she undressed herself and they pressed to each other. Nothing more could happen and nothing more needed to happen.

He could make out that she was quite pleasing to the eye. He could better feel her. Her skin was not soft but rather had a strength to it. He drank in her smell. Dimly their physical incongruity excited him but he felt only an echo of lust. He shared something deeper with the woman he now held in his arms.

Berthe hummed a lullaby to him and he pressed his face to her breast. 'I love you,' he whispered. She paused and then decided that she would lie. It was a game of pretence. Shethought of him as a sick animal seeking comfort.

'I love you too,' she whispered back.

They pressed their lips together.

He died at about three in the morning. Berthe was the only one who knew this as she told everyone that he had died fifteen minutes later. In those lost fifteen minutes between life and death she had dressed them both. The old Rodolphe would have liked the world to know that he had died embracing a woman in bed but, as the woman involved, Berthe relied on discretion. She had no more sexual knowledge than she had possessed the evening before but she could never have explained it to anyone. What she had done frightened her now that he was dead.

She called in the confessor, who had been sampling the Boulanger port rather liberally with the cook in the kitchen below. The confessor, cheeks ruddy, adjusted his hat and performed the last rites, his voice slurred. By the time LeCroix the butler had disdainfully shown him to the servants' entrance the family confessor was giggling and saying that the corpse had looked rather like his Great-Aunt Solange.

The embalmers filed through the servants' entrance at dawn the next morning. The servants felt a chill as the black-clad gentlemen passed them and bowed their heads in honour of death. They were quickly followed by the lawyer who did not make half as impressive an entrance as he believed he would, coming as he did after the embalmers.

As below, so above. Miss Boulanger arrived in a mourning outfit with her ringlets carefully curled and burnished. Her path intersected with the lawyer's in the hall and he repaired to the study with Miss Boulanger, where she received satisfying news. Of course, it was not as satisfying as she had at first hoped as a quite comfortable annuity had been set aside for that dratted nurse but even so, she was well-pleased - not that she didn't miss her dear cousin Rodolphe of course.

As the embalmers entered the bedroom, Berthe left and returned to the small sitting room. She opened the curtains and witnessed a fresh dawn strike the wide boulevard. She opened the window and leant out of it, sucking deep breaths of clean air into herself. She had no idea that she was now set for life, or that soon she would marry an apothecary attracted by both her calm demeanour and her comfortable annuity, or that by this time next year she would be mother to twin boys named Charles and Gustave and would not much remember her days in the Boulanger household. She merely stayed perched there, drinking in the untrammelled air. A train sounded but she did not jump. She smiled into the coming day.


End file.
